Pro-Choice Religious Leaders Denounce Stupak Amendment

By Leah Valencia, University of New Mexico- Talk Radio News Service


Leaders of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice urged U.S. Senators Monday to remove language from the final health care reform bill that restricts federal funding for abortion.

“Health care reform that attacks the rights of more than half of the population by subjecting some of their most basic and intimate decisions to a large and powerful church’s governing body is not reform at all,” said Barry Lynn, Executive Director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, during a morning press conference hosted by the National Press Club.

While the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an organization with members from a variety of religious backgrounds, advocated women's reproductive rights, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pushed House leaders to amend their bill to prohibit abortion coverage.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment, included in the House bill, restricts abortion coverage in a government-run insurance plan as well as in private plans funded by government subsidies.

“How surprising and appalling to see that a provision designed to curtail women’s right to abortion was slipped into the health care bill at the behest of a powerful religious group, a provision that reflects the doctrine of that group,” Lynn said.

President Barack Obama has remarked that he does not believe health care reform should change the “status quo” in regards to abortion. However, many moderate Senate Democrats say they will urge firm restrictions on abortion funding in the final health care bill.

Obama has not commented as to whether he will sign a bill with language that prohibits abortion funding.

ACORN CEO Dismisses New Embezzlement Accusations As 'Completely False'

By Leah Valencia, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service

Bertha Lewis, CEO of ACORN, defended the embattled community outreach organization Tuesday from accusations ranging from embezzlement to poor financial management.

Lewis spoke at a the National Press club only one day after an internal review board at ACORN revealed that, according to a Subpoena, the founder’s brother had embezzled $5 million, an amount much higher than the originally reported $1 million.

Lewis called the findings "completely false." She went on to defend the group’s management, saying that ACORN has internally restructured to prevent future discrepancies.

“I am cleaning out all the vestiges of the old administration," Lewis said. "I wiped out and changed the whole management structure. I brought in professionals from legal to auditing." 

ACORN has recently been abandoned by several political supporters after an embarrassing videotape showing workers at ACORN offering advice to two activists posing as a sex workers became widely circulated last month.

Lewis pledged that ACORN is learning from it’s recent troubles and has taken steps to improve self-governance.

Immigration Analysts Call For Employee Identity Verification

By Leah Valencia, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service

Tuesday immigration policy researchers stated that illegal immigrants are responsible for the majority of identity theft crime and that little is being done by the Obama administration to stop them.

“What is striking to me... is how astonishingly uninterested in this crime the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration is,” said Stewart Baker, the former Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy. “There is no inclination on the part of either of those institutions to enforce the rules.”

The remarks came during a panel discussion hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies at the National Press Club. Panelists urged employers to verify the identity and citizenship of it’s workers by using government systems such as E-Verify and Social Security Number Verification Services, explaining that 75 percent of working-age illegal aliens use fraudulent Social Security card to obtain employment.

“We are finding that foreign born individuals commit more varieties of identity frauds than Americans do,” CIS National Security Policy Director Janice Kephart said. “E-Verify is snuffing out counterfeiters relatively well.”

E-Verify, which is a voluntary online system operated by the DHS and SSA where employers can verify the identity of new hires by comparing information from an employment eligibility form to a database, has been a centerpiece in current immigration reform debates. Lawmakers have considered mandating all employers use E-Verify as opposed to the brute force of mass deportations.

However, when E-Verify was written into the Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act in 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the system would have cost at least $12 billion over 10 years to implement. In 2005 the Government Accountability Office reported to Congress that E-Verify could not detect identity fraud if, “An unauthorized worker presents an employer with either valid identity documents belonging to another person, or reasonably well-made counterfeit documents containing valid information about another person.”

“If I were to take your name, your social security number and your date of birth... I could steal your identity through E-Verify and get through, It is not totally fool-proof,” Author of a CIS backgrounder Ronald Mortensen said.

E-Verify was scheduled to expire September 30, 2009 but on Monday Congress passed a Short-Term Funding Resolution that included a 31-day E-Verify extension.

“The difference between now and the future will be that the administration is behind it,” Kephart said. “They have now been convinced that it is a good program and they are willing to go forward with it.”

Chertoff Disappointed With Emergency Response Communication

Travis Martinez, University of New Mexico - Talk Radio News Service

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff noted Thursday that while many improvements have been made in U.S. emergency response capabilities, more can be done to improve communication between different agencies.

"All of the groups need to make an agreement on the [technological] language used," Chertoff said during a panel discussion at the National Press Club. "We still have a ways to go."

To counter the current shortcomings of inter-agency communication, Chertoff suggested reserving part of the radio spectrum solely for emergency response, thus allowing responders to transmit voice, data, and video more efficiently through portable devices like BlackBerrys and iPhones.

The idea to scrap the system we have now or to wait for equipment to become obsolete is not a viable option, Chertoff warned.

$1 billion has been distributed to states and localities to promote interoperable communications.

Venezuelan Lawyer Says Chavez Has Compromised Judicial System

By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service

Human Rights Attorney Gonzalo Himiob Santome exposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s judicial corruption at a press conference at the National Press Club on Wednesday.

“Several cases... have proved that the judicial system in Venezuela has been deteriorating in order to be used as a weapon for persecution and intimidation of the opposition and the political dissidents,” Himiob said.

Himiob was in Washington D.C to introduce a book he and attorneys Robert Amsterdam and Antonio Rosich wrote that documents the case of Eligio Cedeno, a victim of repeated human rights violations by the Venezuelan government.

According to Himiob, “In common crime, from 306, 000 cases reviewed by the general attorney’s office on 2008, only 8000 cases were submitted to formal accusation. That led us to a conclusion that there is a 97% impunity rate of common crimes.” Himiob added that “If the judicial system is not working for persecuting the criminals, what are they doing?”

“In this case, it's very clear that it doesn't matter that they are guilty or not. The thing is [they] use the procedures themselves as a punishment... no matter if [the accused] are innocent or not. They are showing that they can submit you to a trial and they can hold you in prison without any respect to the regulations, internal and international regulations. just because they want to make you feel their power over you,” Himiob added.